CHAPTER V

KARL’S FIRST MEETING WITH STEINDAL

Hooper turned up next evening armed with a note-book.

“I did not go to bed until long after sunrise,” he said. “When I began to marshal my thoughts into some semblance of order, I was amazed to find how far back into the twilight of human origins you carried me with your cat language. Has it ever struck you how old this world is, how long men have waited before they took their first sure step towards knowledge?”

“Are you speaking of the evolution of matter in general, or of mankind in particular?” asked Grier.

“Of our noble selves, to be sure. Geologically, there is practically no limit backward, but we have been so fed up on individualism that we are only now beginning to abandon useless speculations as to the eternity of the future for a more definite study of the eternity of the past. Now you, with your animal language and your genuine far-seeing, have cleared the mist from a theory I have held nebulously for a year or more. Let me state it in progressive theses: (_a_) Human inventiveness is bounded only by the zone of human intelligence; (_b_) the capacity of the brain extends far beyond our present scientific comprehension; (_c_) every new discovery is, therefore, a mere quickening into activity of some special attribute latent in all properly regulated brains; (_d_) a time may come when man shall know all things, as nothing can happen, nor can have happened, which the brain is not capable of conceiving.”

“An old Indian acquaintance, Sir William Macpherson, has told me that he has reached a similar conclusion. Nevertheless, your theorizing vaults a long way in advance of my experiences.”

“Not a bit of it. You are merely a living testimony of faculties either undeveloped or deemed dead owing to disuse. Oddly enough, you, my friend, possess powers which we modern degenerates--beef-fed and stodgy with misapplied civilization--coolly relegate to the lower animals or, at the best, to savage tribes. Watch cattle in a field, birds in the air--are they not skilled weather prophets, far more reliable than any Meteorological Bureau? They don’t tap a glass cylinder of mercury or write learnedly about cirrus clouds and convex cumuli. No, the cows and horses just nibble the grass on the exposed hills, the birds skate about unconcernedly, if the advancing gloom simply heralds a passing shower; but see them all scoot for shelter before ever a leaf is stirred if a real storm is about to break. That is pure, undiluted, unquestioning knowledge. The power of transmitting news instantly over long distances, possessed by certain human nomads, is of the same type. Therefore, my dear Karl, you hark back in the centuries. You are away down the social scale. I, an up-to-date demigod, to whom the real meaning of nearly every word I use is unknown, tell you this unblushingly.”

“Is that a part of your theory that the world is still in its infancy in its search after truth?”

“Well hit, my prehistoric man, my vitalized fossil. You are old as many of the hills. Oh, if only I could put a date on you! Say, have you ever heard of Eridhu?”

“Do you mean the Chaldean city?”

“Yes. Well, six thousand years ago it was a seaport, and the sanctuary of the Chaldean god, Eâ. Now, it is a dust-heap, miles inland. A friend of mine, sorting among the rubbish last year, found a tomb. The gentleman buried therein must have been an Akkadian antiquary, who hated, even in death, to be parted from his treasures, because the brick vault containing his remains also held a variety of objects several thousand years older than himself.”

“Are the facts quite clear?”

“Clear. Just listen to the evidence. You, as a bloated Britisher, are aware, no doubt, that the year when it first attained the dignity of record began with the vernal equinox, and the opening month was named after the ‘propitious Bull’? Thus, Bull headed the twelve constellations of the zodiac, and was quite an important character. Well, in the tomb aforesaid, the excavators found a small stone urn, bearing, not Taurus, the Bull’s sign, but Aquarius, the water-carrier. The sun, at the vernal equinox, has been in Aries since 2,500 B.C., and it first entered Taurus somewhere about 4,700 B.C. Lots of centuries must have been passed in observation before the astrologers formed the calendar we use to-day, so the urn could claim, at the very least, a venerable antiquity, unless it was a hoary Chaldean hoax. There is a good reason to believe it was anything but a joke. It was brought to Washington, eagerly examined by a gathering of archæologists, and dropped by some trembling enthusiast on to a marble floor.”

“Good gracious!”

“Yes, the finder said something like that. Indeed, his language was even more fluent. Yet the accident led to a discovery. The shattered urn consisted of two vessels, one within the other. Between the two was a thin slip of ivory, and on this was a cuneiform inscription, with a lively drawing showing how one gentleman hammered a big nail into another gentleman’s skull.”

“Do you propose to treat me in that way?”

“I have reached my point now. That record of a crime, probably a murder of revenge, was kept secret for at least 7,000 years, and only Schliemann or Haynes could tell us how much longer. So your peculiarly constituted brain, my friend, has gone on repeating itself through many a forgotten ancestor until the accident of environment enabled its hidden recesses to burst their bonds. It took a great many clever men a great many years to decipher the cuneiform characters of the Akkadians, and you will probably be dead long before some genius yet unborn tells an anxious world why you can see things that are taking place at a distance of over three thousand miles. Meanwhile, behold in me your patient observer and chronicler. To-night--”

“To-night we shall talk and smoke, and pursue vain conceits,” said Karl, determinedly. “I think I ought to forego these glimpses into the void. They are unpleasing in many ways. Of what personal benefit is this unusual gift? I wish to qualify myself for a commercial career, and the only practical use of such escapades as those of the two preceding nights is somewhat in the detective line. I mean to resist the impulse for the future.”

“Now you are indulging in banalities. You can no more resist the occasional use of your splendid gifts than a duckling reared by a hen could hold back from a pond. And do you really think that I have written twenty pages of notes merely to fool away three hours? I guess Maggie can’t be a nice girl, or it’s a sure thing you would want to see her again.”

Karl smiled, and a very charming way he had of revealing his white teeth with the kindliest and most good-natured expression of genuine fun.

“Even if you are smugging at law, Frank,” he said, “you should spare your friends the tricks of counsel. You fancy, and probably your belief is justified, that if I allow my mind to dwell on Miss Hutchinson’s appearance, such as I have recently discovered it to be, I shall wander off hopelessly across the ocean to find her. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am firm in my resolution to discourage these influences as much as possible.”

Hooper sighed. He put away his note-book and viciously bit the end off a green cigar, a feat by no means so easy as the smokers of British dry weeds may imagine.

“Then let us talk of ships and kings and sealing-wax,” he growled. “I am rather strong on ancient Egypt. Would you like to hear my views on Ka?”

Hooper was speaking with careless sarcasm. He was grievously annoyed that Grier should cut off a highly interesting experiment in such a summary fashion. Yet there is an unconscious art which is superior to all intent, and Hooper had blundered on to a question which set his hearer’s mind in a whirl.

“Ka!” he said softly. “Surely that is what we call the soul? It is animism, the shadowy second self evoked from dreams. Yes, that is a root word, direct from the earliest mint. Man, in his first speech, described Ka.”

The American veiled the joy in his eyes by a cloud of smoke.

“If I can only plunk him near the window now, he will switch on to Maggie with a jerk,” was the ready reflection. But the “plunking,” whatever it may mean--for your good American, when not undergoing the embalming process which finally fits him for Paris, can coin words at will--was not necessary. Karl, without effort or volition, passed through the umbra which separated his known senses from the sway of their unknown congener. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and was forthwith, to all appearance, sleeping lightly.

Hooper, whose nostrils quivered with repressed excitement, flung away his cigar and applied himself to the task of recording all external physical indications of the emotions his companion might be experiencing. It will be remembered that this trance-like condition was usually preceded by some slight disturbance of the blood-vessels infringing on or adjacent to the brain. There was no such sign of cerebral disorder on this occasion. Karl seemed to have yielded to a desire for a pleasant and refreshing doze.

Again, when he saw Maggie Hutchinson and the Armenian at Manhattan Beach, he had endeavored to approach nearer to them, and was only prevented by the fortunate interposition of a window-ledge and a stick stuck in a flower-pot, while his temporary flight to the storm-tossed saloon of the _Merlin_ had caused him to sway in Hooper’s arms. To-night he sat immovable, though he witnessed a series of really remarkable events, the sight or hearing of which would assuredly have evoked some reflex action or cry during any of his earlier manifestations.

Luckily, there was present, in the young American, a sympathetic watcher, who, notwithstanding his comparative youth, had all the coolness and critical acumen of a hardened investigator. Hooper, true to his own theory, was convinced that he was assisting in the development of a hitherto unsuspected function in man’s brain. He knew that the obscure sum of influences we call heredity affects the adult man in a surprisingly small traceable degree as compared with education. If it were possible to leave an infant, born of civilized parents, wholly to its own devices, what direct characteristics of human ancestry would it exhibit? It would possess no articulate language, its knowledge would not extend beyond the limited recognition of a few articles of food, its reasoning faculties would be a blank, its highly convoluted brain a storehouse of potentialities as hidden as the wonder of its nervous system or the chemical building of its tissue. In a word, a child which, under tuition, might become the discoverer of a new province in human thought, would sink instantly to the condition of palæolithic man. Let the key be lost which should unlock the treasury, and untold ages of horror and suffering, of seemingly endless and unavailing effort, must be endured ere it could be found again. Yet the treasure was there intact, as surely pent within the protoplasmic ovum as displayed in all its splendor on the printed page of the world-convincing treatise. That was the great miracle of nature, and Hooper asked himself what phase of her manifold powers was now unfolding itself before his intent yet uncomprehending eyes.

He knew that mankind to-day can produce, in facsimile, types of ancestors found in pliocene strata at least 500,000 years old. Stone knives alone could make the intentional cuts found on the ribs of a cetacean stranded on the shore of the pliocene sea, and what that meant to a prehistoric tribe is clearly shown by Lord Avebury’s (Sir John Lubbock’s) summary of a description by Captain Grey of a recent whale feast in Australia:

“When a whale is washed ashore it is a real godsend to them (the aborigines). Fires are lit to give notice of the joyful event. They rub themselves all over with blubber and anoint their favorite wives in the same way. Then they cut down through the blubber to the beef, which they eat raw or broil on pointed sticks. As other natives arrive they ‘fairly eat their way into the whale, and you see them climbing in and about the stinking carcase, choosing tit-bits.... There is no sight in the world more revolting than to see a young and gracefully formed girl stepping out of the interior of a putrid whale.’”

Hooper had plenty of time to let his imagination run riot in this wise. The light fell on Grier’s face, but the watcher looked in vain for any indication of the sights or sounds in which the sleeper was participating. Karl, to outward semblance, might be either really asleep or brought to muscular rigidity by the influence of an anæsthetic. He was calm, unmoved, the lips slightly parted, with healthy color, and an easy rise and fall of the chest.

This late sitting broke the stringent college rules, but Hooper cared little for penal ordinances. Yet even he grew anxious when Karl failed to arouse himself after an hour had passed in utter silence. He was very reluctant to disturb his comrade. This present flight through space promised to transcend its predecessors in the prolonged sequence of its events. Nevertheless, there was a limit to his friend’s endurance if not to his own.

When the expiration of another fifteen minutes revealed no sign of Grier’s return to consciousness, Hooper did not think he was justified in permitting the trance to continue indefinitely without assuring himself, at any rate, that Grier’s pulse was normal and his heart beating regularly.

He stooped and caught Karl’s wrist gently. He noticed that the breathing was slow and measured, and he had just succeeded in detecting the pulse when Karl opened his eyes.

He gave one surprised, almost bewildered glance at Hooper, laughed cheerfully when he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, and said, in the most matter-of-fact way:

“Have you ever heard of a man named Steindal in New York?”

“Y--yes.” Hooper nearly stammered, he was so taken aback by the curiously commonplace question.

“Is he connected with the stage?” went on Karl, eagerly.

“Yes, in a sense. He is a dramatic agent, I think.”

“He is unquestionably a dramatic scoundrel. Why did you interfere? At the very moment I quitted him he was giving his own precious character to Constantine. Never mind! I will find the rascal and beat him to a jelly.”

“Bully for you! Things have happened, then?”

“My dear Frank, I have not only seen but _heard_. Think what it means! Three thousand miles of wireless telephony! And what a first-rate brute that fellow Steindal is!”

“A regular son of a gun, I have no doubt. But say. I thought you had rung up Maggie Hutchinson?”

“I did not see her, thank Heaven, but I heard so much concerning her that I shall make it my business to meet the _Merlin_ at Liverpool and warn her against that pair of beauties in New York.”

Hooper selected a fresh and extra green cigar.

“Now, indeed, I can smoke the calumet of peace while you talk,” he said, curling up in an easy chair with the comfortable _abandon_ of one who has faithfully kept a long vigil.